SUPER GAFFE-O-MATIC ’76: Joe Biden calls a woman at one of his events a “lying, dog-faced pony soldier.” Is this what he was talking about?

[John] Wayne appeared in 180 movies over 50 years, and who knows what they called him in all of them? But it seems at least as likely that Biden is thinking of a different film: Pony Soldier, a 1952 western from director Joseph M. Newman starring Tyrone Power as a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. “Pony Soldier,” in the context of the film, is a Native American nickname for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and although no one calls Power a “lying, dog-faced pony soldier,” a chief does say, “The pony soldier speaks with a tongue of the snake that rattles,” which isn’t far off:

Is that the scene—filtered through Joe Biden’s memory of his brother’s memory of an old Western—that inspired Joe Biden to call a young woman at one of his events a “lying, dog-faced pony soldier” nearly 70 years later? We may never know, but one thing is certain: For Democrats who want to nominate a presidential candidate with a vast library of half-remembered old Westerns floating around in their brains, there’s only one choice.

Well, that’s what a Democrat presidential candidate wants to hear from Slate(!) on the eve of the New Hampshire primary.

Related: Metaphor alert: The power is out at Joe Biden’s hotel in New Hampshire.